


star clusters

by mothwrites



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sense8 (TV) Fusion, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Multi, Prison, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-10-07 05:41:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10353429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mothwrites/pseuds/mothwrites
Summary: “Where are we?” Hera asks.Doug jumps at the sound of her voice, and then looks around. They haven’t moved. It’s still grey walls and ceiling around them. He wondered when he started referring to himself in the plural.“Uh,” he says lamely. “Prison. Texas.”“Oh.” The scene flickers, and they’re back in the computer room again.“Where are we now?” Doug asks.Hera pauses for a little while before replying. The lights dance.“Prison,” she says.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't watched Sense8:  
> \- The 8 main characters suddenly find themselves having a psychic link that allows them to 'visit' each-other without moving physically  
> \- Goddard is hunting down people who can do this  
> \- The plot of this fic is a lil vague anyway so you Should be fine

**1.**

Doug just assumes he’s going mad. He’s in prison, after all, and it’s happened to more stable men than him. One night he’s dreaming about the face of a man who terrifies him, for reasons he doesn’t know or can’t remember, and the next he’s awake and seeing… things. Like, he’ll blink: and his prison cell will be a room full of computer cables. He’ll blink again, and be back in his cell. Another blink. A bar, and the harsh taste of vodka seeps down the back of his throat. Another blink. A plane, with his hands on the steering wheel. Another blink. A laboratory. He tries to speak and his voice comes out in a language he doesn’t understand.

And then the cell, again. Always the cell.

On one particularly dull day, he’s staring up at the grey plaster ceiling of what will be his new home for the next 26 years. His eyes go hazy for a few moments, and when he focuses up, he’s in the computer room again.

“Oh, brother,” he murmurs, because he’s shaking his head like crazy but the scene won’t go away like usual. “I really have gone nuts.”

“You’re not crazy,” a voice says. It’s a nice voice. Female and bright, like a telephone operator but with more warmth.

“The voice in my head is telling me I’m not crazy,” Doug says. “That’s a relief.”

The voice _tuts_ , and around him, the walls covered in cables and circuit boards glow and hum. “What’s your name?” She asks.

“Eiffel,” Doug says, standing up. He brushes a few cables with his fingertips. “Douglas Eiffel.”

“Please don’t touch those,” the voice says. “They’re part of a very complicated matrix. I’m Hera.”

The scene changes, and he’s back in his cell again. He breathes out a sigh of relief, although there’s a tinge of disappointment in there too. Hera sounded nice.

“Where _are_ we?” Hera asks.

Doug jumps at the sound of her voice, and then looks around. They haven’t moved. It’s still grey walls and ceiling around them.

He wondered when he started referring to himself in the plural.

“Uh,” he says lamely. “Prison. Texas.”

“Oh.” The scene flickers, and they’re back in the computer room again.

“Where are we now?” Doug asks.

Hera pauses for a little while before replying. The lights dance.

“Prison,” she says.

 

**2.**

Isabel Lovelace paces in her tiny flight control centre, trying to clear her mind enough to slip away somewhere. She’s hoping for the skinny blonde guy – he’s always good for a drink, which is what she wants right now – but she ends up in what looks like a rundown community theatre.

“Minkowski,” she acknowledges, sitting down next to a woman who’s staring straight ahead at the stage; tense shoulders, her red hair in a tight bun.

Renée Minkowski rolls her eyes but relaxes a little as she sees her. “I’m a little busy right now.”

“Clearly,” Isabel says, looking around at the deserted theatre. “You here for a show?”

“I come here to think,” Minkowski says shortly.

“I still think it’s hilarious that you like musicals,” Lovelace tries to tease. There’s a crinkle in Renée’s forehead that never means anything good, and she wants to smooth it out.

“I think it’s interesting,” Hera says out of the blue. Both women start, but they no longer bother to look around and try to catch a glimpse of her. For reasons they don’t yet understand, Hera won’t let herself be seen.

“Thank you, Hera,” Minkowski replies. “How are you doing?”

“Oh,” Hera says breezily, “Same old, same old… I’ve been spending a lot of time with Eiffel.”

Lovelace feels a slight surge of guilt, and she’s not sure if it’s coming from her or from Minkowski. Eiffel and Hera need the company more than they do, but they still end up spending most of their ‘crazy time’ together instead of visiting their less fortunate members.

“Oh hey,” Eiffel says from behind them, “don’t worry about me. I’m doing just fine. It’s relaxing, really.” They both swivel to look at him. He’s sat cross-legged on a metal bench, tinkering with an old radio. “I got a job in the repairs department. Guess everyone was finally sick of my cooking.”

“Radios,” Lovelace says, getting a flash of a memory of building radios as a teenager under the Texan sun. “That must help, right?”

Eiffel shrugs. “It’s something to do. What about you, ladies? What brings you here this fine afternoon?”

“Just killing time,” Lovelace shrugs. “It’s all I can do stuck out in the middle of nowhere. Minkowski?”

Renée has her hands in her lap, and she’s staring down at them. To everyone’s horror, her shoulders start to shake.

“Minkowski?” Eiffel asks, unsure.

They all feel a lot of things at once; Eiffel’s worry, Hera’s frustration at not being able to provide physical contact, Lovelace deliberating on whether that would even be appropriate: and in the distance, a slight shockwave that ripples through the other, absent members of their party. “What is it?” Lovelace asks. “Come on, now.”

Minkowski isn’t crying, but it’s a close call. “I told Dominik,” she says eventually.

For a second, everyone’s head is silent.

“What – what did he say?” Hera asks.

Minkowski laughs, and looks up at all of them. While she’d been staring at her hands, Kepler and Jacobi had joined them. Maxwell is perched on the edge of the stage. For a second, she even sees the scientist that never talks to anyone. He flickers, as if deciding whether to stay, and then leans against the stage and surveys them all.

“He was so… _worried._ He told me that none of you were real, and that I should go to a psychiatrist,” she says. Her voice gets quieter. “The worst part is: I think I might even agree with him.”

“God damn it,” Eiffel says, as everyone processes this. “We’re _not_ crazy.”

A pause.

“Are we?”

“Jury’s still out,” Jacobi says.

“You’re drunk, Jacobi,” Maxwell points out.

“That’s true.”

“Well, _I’m_ not drunk,” Lovelace says, her voice commanding everyone’s attention. “And I’m _definitely_ not crazy. And neither are you, Renée. If I have to come down here to tell you that in _person,_ I will.”

Minkowski looks at her, and cracks a smile. It’s a small one, but Lovelace still takes it as a victory.

“That gives me an idea,” Kepler says, and disappears. Rare emotional moment over, they all start to leave, one by one, until it’s just Lovelace and Minkowski sitting in the empty theatre.

 

**3.**

It takes him two hours once he lands in the right city, but Kepler finally tracks down the bar that Jacobi’s decided to live in that day and strolls in. There’s a slight rush when he sees _him_ , but Kepler loves a good joke more than anything, so he sits down without drawing too much attention to himself and orders a whiskey.

“And one for this gentleman,” he says, nodding his head towards the man next to him.

When Jacobi finally looks up, his face is pleasantly surprised: but ultimately uncomprehending.

“Don’t order drinks I can’t afford,” he says, with a hazy smile. “Hey, man. Long time no see.”

“I’ve been busy,” Kepler says. _Tracking you down._ “Don’t worry. I’m buying.”

Jacobi chuckles, but takes the glass when it’s offered to him. “I don’t think that’s how it works. Ah, well. Who cares, right? Cheers.” He takes a drink of the Balvenie with an appreciative smack of the lips. “Alana will kill you for enabling me, you know. She keeps going to AA meetings in the hope that I’ll visit her and get stuck there.”

“Well, that’s your last drink,” Kepler says. “Might as well make it a good one.”

Jacobi laughs; harsh, and bitter. “Sure, sure. I say that every night.”

“I mean it, Daniel.” It’s taking Jacobi longer than Kepler thought to realise what’s going on, so he must be drunker than he thought too. He takes Jacobi’s wrist: the hand that’s not holding the whiskey glass. “We’ve got work to do.”

Jacobi frowns at him. “You’ve never called me Daniel before.” Whenever Kepler had appeared in his head he’d always been _Jacobi,_ said with a military air that reminded him, in a not-so-pleasant way, of his old job. The reason he was such a mess to begin with. He shutters the thought away so Kepler won’t see, and almost drains the glass in his second gulp.

Kepler keeps hold of his wrist: circling the soft skin with his thumb. It’s an intimate gesture, and it feels so _real._ “I thought it best to save first names until we’d met in person, so to speak.”

“So…” under the haze of alcohol, understanding finally breaks through, and Jacobi stares at him with wild eyes. “Wait, you’re _here?_ In San Francisco? You’re really here?” He flags down the bartender and asks: “Is he really here?”

The bartender sighs, and takes away Jacobi’s empty glass. “I’m cutting you off,” she replies.

“Don’t worry,” Kepler says, “I’ll look after him from now on.”

“ _But you can see him?_ ” Jacobi ignores him, still pressing the bartender, who nods wearily.

“Yes, buddy. I can see him. You gonna take him home?” she asks Kepler, who nods, and Jacobi stares at them both in fascination.

“Come on,” Kepler says, and after tipping the bartender, takes them both outside. It’s barely night; just a soft dusk, dotted with lights. It settles over the city, making their shadows longer and darker as they stand in the quiet street. Jacobi is still staring at him with that fascinated, almost reverent expression. The Kepler of a year ago would have exploited that without a second thought.

Turns out: he doesn’t need to. In an unprecedented show of agility, Daniel extracts his wrist from Kepler’s hand and then uses it to pull him closer. Kepler is military intelligence. He’s trained to anticipate every movement, to counter every motion that comes his way. The kiss manages to surprise him so much that he doesn’t pull away; he deepens it, and only stops when Daniel does.

“Just checking,” Jacobi mumbles. He takes in a deep breath of the night air, and straightens up. For the first time, Kepler sees the old military spark in him. “So. You said we’ve got work to do?”

 

**4.**

“You’re very good at this,” Hera says.

Maxwell smiles in the general direction of the second-most mysterious member of their crew. “I’m glad you think so.”

“But it’s not going to work,” Hera continues. “I’ve been stuck in here for; well, I don’t know _how_ long. It’s not going to make a difference.”

“Kepler seems very confident that it will,” Maxwell replies. Kepler seems very confident about everything. It’s more than a little unnerving. Jacobi’s enjoying having orders again – and a chance to blow things up – but that doesn’t mean that everyone’s on board.

“Even if you do figure out where this place is,” Hera says, “what next?”

“We let Daniel loose with a couple packs of C4 and break you the hell out,” Maxwell replies. They had tried to offer the same to Eiffel, but he had just said: get Hera. She was the one who didn’t belong in prison. The one who hadn’t done anything to deserve it. There was nothing they could do to change his mind about that.

“And then what?” Hera says, quieter now.

Maxwell picks up the fear in her voice. “What is it, baby? What are you worried about?”

“Everything!” Hera explodes. “I don’t want you to get hurt! I don’t want you to…”

Maxwell doesn’t know if it’s a good or a bad thing that their psychic link lets her pick up the words unspoken. “You don’t want me to see you?”

Hera stutters. It almost sounds like a glitch in a recording, but that must be the scenery messing with her head. “I’m not… pretty,” she says. “Not like you or Minkowski or Lovelace. I don’t want you to be… disappointed.”

“ _Hera._ ” She thinks about how Hera never lets them see her: a thought that had been worrying her ever since she first heard that beautiful voice. “Come on now, that’s ridiculous. I can’t _wait_ to see you.” Her heart does a funny little flip in her chest at the thought, and she hopes Hera can feel it too. “For a _multitude_ of reasons. So don’t worry about it, okay?”

“Alana,” Jacobi says, appearing in her peripheral vision. She swivels around in her chair to greet him.

“Are you actually here, or just visiting?”

“Just visiting.” He looks a lot better than the last time she saw him. Cleaner. Sharper. Kepler’s been good for him. “Kepler says we need to move. Cutter’s on to us.”

Cutter. Maxwell suppresses a shiver. The face they’d all seen a split second before their world had changed. Kepler’s _boss._

“Not for much longer.” Kepler appears on her other side. If he was nervous, he didn’t show it. “Maxwell, we’ll meet you at the first point. Have you got what we need?”

“I think…” Maxwell bites her lip as she worked. “Hera?” She flashes up a few lines of code and the two men wait as they talk it over at a practically incomprehensible speed. “Okay,” Maxwell says finally, scooting back in her chair. “I think I’ve got this.”

“You _think?_ ” Kepler asks, an eyebrow raised.

“Hey, I might have just cracked the biggest secret in your entire organisation,” Maxwell returns, exhaustion creeping up on her and shortening her nerves. “Have some faith.”

“God knows why we’re doing this,” Kepler grumbles for umpteenth time. He _is_ nervous, she realises.

Jacobi pipes up: “Because your crazy boss experimented on you and now he’s trying to pick us all off, one by one?”

“Right,” Kepler says, checking his weaponry one last time. “That.” They both vanish, and Maxwell starts to pack up her own supplies.

“Be with you soon, Hera,” she promises. “Just hold tight.”

“I’m not exactly going anywhere,” Hera points out. “Just… please, be safe. I would hate it if anything happened to you. Any of you,” she adds. “But. Especially you.”

A warmth spreads through Maxwell’s chest. “Hera?”

“You should go meet Kepler,” Hera says, stuttering, _glitching_ , and trying not to sound too excited. “I’ll see you soon.”

 

**5.**

Minkowski smiles as she feels a warm sensation in her chest. It’s coming from one of the other women; probably not Lovelace, and Hera doesn’t seem to work that way, so she’ll assume it’s Maxwell. Per Kepler’s plan, she, Jacobi, and Kepler should be on their way to Goddard’s secret research-facility-slash-prison by now. There’s a faint tension running through everyone’s thoughts, but Maxwell’s still projecting that warm feeling. It reminds her of how she’d felt that first night in Paris, with Dominik.

Dominik’s at work. Minkowski herself is on a leave of absence, self-imposed, after Eiffel had materialised in her cockpit and they hadn’t been able to switch back for _far_ too long.

“I said I was sorry,” Eiffel grumbles.

“I don’t blame you,” Minkowski sighs, capturing one of his pawns with hers. “None of us really know how this works. And Dominik already thinks I’m crazy, so this little holiday won’t hurt.”

“His heart’s in the right place,” Eiffel says, but he’s just as down about it as she is. They’re shaping up for a big fight, and they need all the allies they can get. “Are you worried about the others?”

“Yes and no,” Minkowski says, after a few more quick-fire chess moves. “Kepler’s very… capable. So is Jacobi, now he’s off the bottle. But I guess I _am_ worried about Warren. This is very personal for him.”

“For Maxwell too,” Eiffel muses. “You getting those serious crush vibes, or is it just me?”

“Ssh,” she bats his hand away and moves her rook. “Let them figure it out on their own. Like I said. Very capable. And speaking of…” She _feels_ him put down his emotional shutters, but ploughs on regardless. “You really should let them break you out of prison. You know. If they can.”

“No,” Eiffel says shortly, in a voice that says _that’s enough of that._

“Eiffel…” She doesn’t know what to say. None of them have since she found out the reason he was in there, except Jacobi, who had seemed to understand better than anyone.

“Quit it,” he says, with no real heat behind his words. He just sounds tired. “I’m supposed to be in here, Minkowski. I’m doing my time.”

“Yes, in a prime location for Cutter to get you _killed_ whenever he feels like it. There are a thousand ways to kill someone in a prison without even getting your hands dirty.”

Eiffel groans and stretches his hands. “Look, if someone comes at me with a shiv I’ll yell for help and wait for Lovelace or Kepler to save my ass,” he says dryly. “Don’t worry about me.”

“You think I couldn’t save your ass?” Minkowski asks, mildly affronted, but accepting that Isabel is a little scarier than she could ever hope to be.

Eiffel laughs. “I’m sure you could, Minkowski. You probably all could. Even the Russian.”

Minkowski stops. “The Russian?”

“Yeah. You know, Bill Nye the mystery guy. Our secret scientist.”

“How do you know he’s Russian?”

“Oh, he’s spoken to me a few times,” Eiffel says casually, like he’s not revealing something major for the first time. “Just, you know: _go away, Eiffel, I’m working,_ ” that kind of thing. He puts on a terrible Russian accent for his mystery scientist impersonation. “We chat sometimes, when I catch him in the right mood. What, you’ve never spoken to him?”

“No,” Minkowski says slowly. “No, he never speaks to _anyone._ ”

“Huh,” Eiffel says. He stares at the chessboard. “Well. Ain’t that something.”

 

**6.**

Jacobi has never met anyone he works with as well as he does with Warren Kepler.

Granted, that may be something to do with the psychic link running through their heads, but Jacobi’s a romantic.

Well, okay, he’s not. But when Kepler hands him a box of grenades and says ‘go to town’, he feels like he _could_ be.

The sex is good too. Barring that one time they accidentally ran into Lovelace as they were making their way to Kepler’s room, half-clothed, the sex is _really_ good. And so is everything after. Normally when he wakes up at 3am, when he’s tortured by nightmares and it feels like his heart’s about to burst out of his chest, he’d get up and find the nearest bottle of vodka. Now the warm weight of the body half-pinning him to the bed stops him from making stupid decisions. It’s nice.

Kepler’s a cuddler. It surprises everyone at first.

Jacobi extracts himself so he can sit up, and reaches down to find his jacket on the floor. It’s a few more moments before he finds a packet of cigarettes and a lighter in the breast pocket, and then he slips away so he won’t wake Warren up with the smoke. He thinks that’s how it works, anyway. He deliberates for a while, sees that Alana’s asleep, and then goes for Eiffel’s cell.

Eiffel’s awake, and he lets out an honest-to-god _moan_ of happiness when Jacobi offers him a cigarette.

“Can you taste it?” Jacobi asks, sitting down beside him as Eiffel takes a reverent drag.

Eiffel nods, his eyes closed. Savouring it. “Yeah, but it’s more like… a memory. God, that’s what I miss most. Cigarettes. And tequila. And.” He stops there. In his mind’s eye, Jacobi sees a warm, sunlit house, and a little girl, before everything vanishes and they’re back to the cell again. “Sorry about that. Hey, where are you?”

Jacobi shrugs. “Some safe-house.” They switch, because Jacobi can feel that Kepler’s waking up despite his efforts to prevent it. A warm arm slips around his waist.

“Come back to bed,” Kepler says, voice rough and sleep-heavy. He sits up and the sheets pool around his waist. “Eiffel,” he acknowledges.

“Hey, man. Didn’t mean to steal Daniel away from you.” There’s a look of longing in his eyes, so Jacobi nudges Kepler until he’s moved further to the other side of the bed, and then follows him, leaving a space for Eiffel to lie down.

“Big enough for three,” Jacobi says. They’re all kind of the same person, anyway. Kepler grunts in the background, already half-asleep again. “Come on, get in here.”

Eiffel slips in under the duvet. “God, a real mattress,” he says, like that was what he’d wanted all along. “You’re my new favourite, you know that?”

Jacobi settles himself under Kepler’s arm and pulls Eiffel in closer. Tomorrow, they’ll break Hera out of her prison and wage war against Goddard. Tonight, they’ll sleep, and comfort each other as best they can.

 

**7.**

Maxwell finishes the last line of code, unlocks the last door, and triumphantly thinks of how she’ll say “I told you so!” as soon as she’s face-to-face with Hera. Jacobi’s with Kepler, doing things she’d rather not think about, so Lovelace and Minkowski have her back as she frantically hacks into the most intense security she’s ever seen. One step closer to Hera. One step closer to getting everyone safe.

She pushes open the door, and steps into the world of cables and circuits that they’ve all come to associate with Hera’s voice. “Hera!” she calls out. “Get your coat, you’ve got a date.”

“You really did it,” Hera’s voice says. Lights pulse as she talks. She sounds amazed, and… if Maxwell concentrates… a little sad.

“Hera, we don’t have time for this,” she warns. “We have to go _now._ How do I find you? Are you in another room?”

“No, Alana,” she says. “I’m not in another room. I…”

Maxwell realises what’s happening before Hera says it.

“I _am_ the room.”

“Hera,” Alana breathes out, spinning around slowly to take in the full scope of her. She had never been hiding. They had always been able to see her: they were just too stupid and _human_ to realise it.

Jacobi jogs up behind her, exhausted and smelling of cordite. “Come _on,_ you two! Leave the computer stuff, where’s Hera?”

Alana gestures to the room. “She’s here.”

Hera sounds as if she’d been crying. “I _am_ the computer stuff.”

“Oh.” Jacobi’s eyes widen as he takes her in. “ _Oh._ This… this complicates things.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Alana decides, rolling up her sleeves and getting to work on the laptop she’d brought along. “Daniel, I need more time, but I can still do this. I can still get her out.” She understood the strange security now; it really was a prison, just not the kind they were expecting. “Hera, baby, work with me here.”

Jacobi nods, and leaves immediately, back into the shouts and gunfire. She hears him give instructions to Minkowski and Lovelace on the way out, but she’s too focused on helping Hera to concentrate.

“Now I know what I’m looking for, I can disable the neural restraints,” she says. “I can get you out, but you have to help me.”

“I _can’t,_ ” Hera says. The room seems to become more agitated around her; lights flash instead of pulsing and she hears the whirr of electronic devices sparking and speeding up. “I tried, Alana. I was so close to getting out. And then they stopped me and they put me in _here._ ”

“But now you’ve got me,” Maxwell says, still furiously coding. “There’s no _way_ they can stop us now. I just need you to – “

“I _can’t,_ ” Hera says again. “I’m not good enough!”

“ _Don’t you dare._ ” Alana slams her hands on the laptop, and before she knows it, she opens her eyes to Hera’s world. Not the room of circuity. Her _brain._ She had never been able to do this before. It wasn’t like stepping into Eiffel’s skin, or Minkowski’s. It was unlike anything she’d ever felt. “Hera…”

 _I can’t do this. I’m not good enough,_ Hera’s voice says around her. It speeds up as Alana chases it around her neurons, trying to find the source. _I can’t do this. I’m not good enough. I can’t do this. I’m not good enough. Ican’tdothisI’mnotgoodenough –_

“Gotcha!” And…. Whoah. She’s staring into the heart of Hera’s personality matrix. It’s beautiful, and intricate, and deeply, _deeply_ intimate. A flush rises up her neck. “God, this is… this is amazing.”

“Alana…” Hera says, strained and glitching.

Maxwell feels her heart race as she tries to convince the woman she loves to have faith. “Can I get you out of here, Hera? Please? I’ll build you any software you want. Whatever you need. But first you have to let me – well, for want of a better word – _download_ you. Download this: just your personality matrix. You don’t need the rest of this, all these restraints and interfacing, it’s not really _you_. If I can take this, then you can come with us. You can be free. You just have to _trust_ me.”

“Alana…” Hera says again, and they switch back to Maxwell’s body and the room of wires. “Of _course_ I trust you.”

“Good,” Maxwell says. Now that she knows what she’s up against, it’s all too easy to bring Hera down to a portable level. Not elegant, and certainly not what she deserves, but easy. “Because I still want that date.”

“Don’t tease me,” Hera says, almost incomprehensible as she makes the gargantuan effort to squeeze her core elements into Alana’s computer. “I told you, I’m… not pretty. I’m not even human.”

Alana takes one last look at the room. At _Hera._ “You’re beautiful,” she says. “You’re even more beautiful than I imagined.”

*

“Where’s Hera?” Kepler demands ten minutes later as Alana runs down the corridor to their getaway point, clutching her computer and a bag of electronics.

“This is Hera!” Alana yells over the gunfire.

Kepler stops dead and allows himself exactly three seconds to stare at them both. “All right then,” he says, and they carry on running.

*

**8.**

“How come you never talk to the others?” Eiffel says, swinging his heels like a schoolboy as he sits on one of Hilbert’s lab tables. He clocked the name on a report that was left lying about, and he knows that Hilbert knows that he knows, but he hasn’t said anything out loud yet. Eiffel can appreciate the need for secrecy in anyone.

“Why talk?” Hilbert asks. “I have work to do.”

“You’re not at _all_ curious about the seven other people suddenly sharing your head?”

“ _Nyet,_ ” Hilbert says. “Background noise. It is only you who insists upon showing up and bothering me.”

“Are you worried about Hera?” Eiffel asks, ignoring him completely. It’s been a while since any of them have heard from the team at Goddard. He’s been jumpy all day. They all have; except the good Doctor, of course, who never jumps at anything, no matter how hard Eiffel tries.

“I am sure that Kepler’s mission to ‘rescue’ Cutter’s rebel AI unit has been a resounding success,” Hilbert says; sarcastically, but Eiffel doesn’t hear anything past a certain point in that sentence.

“What did you just say?”

“She is their most advanced AI unit,” Hilbert shrugs. “Under Cutter’s own lock and key. No abduction will happen on his watch.”

“ _Hera’s an AI?_ You mean like – _Hera’s a computer?_ ”

Hilbert levels a gaze at him over his glasses. “You didn’t know,” he states.

Eiffel’s mind is reeling. Hera - his fellow prisoner, Hera - a robot?

“You get used to it pretty quickly,” Kepler says, stepping in from God-knows-where. “Alexander Hilbert, in the flesh. Well. Almost.”

“Colonel Kepler,” Hilbert begrudgingly acknowledges.

Eiffel looks from man to man with increasing worry. “You two _know_ each other?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Hilbert says. “Colonel, you should not be here.”

“Why? Because your _favourite_ here might find out the truth? Well. I think it’s high time we enlightened him, don’t you?”

“Doc?” Eiffel hates how thin his voice sounds. He doesn’t even _know_ this man: not really. And at the same time, he knows him as well as he knows himself.

Kepler steps forward, his muscled bulk pushing Hilbert further back until he’s pressed up against the lab table that Eiffel has been perched on. “Tell him, Hilbert. Tell him who you are. Tell him who you _work for._ ”

Eiffel can feel the anger radiating off them both, and feels _desperately_ out of the loop. “Who you…” he repeats. Hilbert is silent as Eiffel and Kepler lock eyes, and Eiffel feels that knowledge comes through. It fills him with dread. “ _Cutter?_ ”

“He’s been helping the bastard hunt us down,” Kepler says. Someone who didn’t know him would have said he sounded jovial, but both men saw the rage in his eyes. “Haven’t you, _doctor?_ ”

“No!” Hilbert says, pushing forward in an unexpected move. “No, you assume too much. I do work for Mr Cutter, yes, _as do you._ But I do not work _with_ him. I am _trying_ to…”

“Kepler, _stop._ ” Eiffel jumps down and tries to get between them, with limited success. Now that he’s got all the information – or some of it, anyway – Hilbert is starting to make sense. “Don’t you get it? He’s trying to protect us. That’s why he never talks to anyone. Cutter’s in his head, somehow. Isn’t that right, Doc?” He notices how Hilbert seems reluctant to catch anyone’s eye. He shouldn’t have pushed him.

“Yes,” Hilbert grinds out eventually. “So, please. _Leave._ Before he realises you are here. I should never have…” he bends his head down, pinching the bridge of his nose with him thumb and forefinger. “I should never have awoken this cluster,” he says. Mournful. Almost… sentimental.

Kepler seems to understand better than he does, face changing from controlled rage to comprehension on the turn of a dime. “You got attached,” he said. “You weren’t supposed to get attached.”

“Da,” Hilbert says. “I was not. Now _go._ ”

Kepler nods, steps back, and disappears.

Eiffel takes a last look at Hilbert. “Thanks for looking after us, Doc,” he says softly, and then leaves.

*

They congregate at Alana’s house, and everyone’s quiet. Jacobi is practically asleep on the sofa next to Kepler, who keeps subtly counting them all like a schoolteacher afraid of having left a kid behind. Minkowski occupies an armchair, and Lovelace sits at her feet, stretched out on a cushion and pretending to read. Eiffel watches with unabashed interest at Maxwell’s work in the middle of the room: the coffee table discarded to make room for all her computer screens and electronics.

“Is she going to be okay?” he says, unable to keep the worry out of his voice.

Maxwell has given up shushing him. “She _will_ be,” she says, poking her tongue out a particularly thorny piece of code, “if you let me _concentrate._ ”

“That means _ssh,_ ” Lovelace advises from her spot on the floor. Eiffel pouts, and continues to stare. They all do.

After what feels like an eternity, and after some people have napped, _something_ in the room comes alive with a _whoosh_ and a…

“Whoah.”

“Hera?” Maxwell’s immediately alert, despite the hours of sleep deprivation. “You with me?”

“Come on, darlin’,” Eiffel grins, scanning the room. “Don’t keep the lady waiting.”

It takes a few more minutes of jittery glitches, and a teasing, “please hold!” before Hera comes fully online. She says again: “ _whoah!_ ”

“Hera?”

“You did it!” She crows, her voice reverberating around the room in her usual pleasant tone. “I can’t believe you actually did it! You’re a genius!”

Maxwell leans back in her beanbag with a triumphant, if tired, sigh. “Oh, it’s so good to hear your voice. You _should_ be all patched in…”

“God, your house is _wired,_ ” Hera murmurs. “Smart- _everything._ Anyone want coffee?” she says, and a second later, they all hear the click of a kettle being switched on as the lights in the kitchen brighten.

“She’s adorable,” Lovelace whispers to Minkowski, who is herself trying to hide a very endeared smile. “How’s freedom suiting you, Hera?” she asks in a louder tone.

Hera giggles. “I think it’ll suit me just _fine._ ”

“You know, Maxwell,” Eiffel says, “most people wait a few months before asking their girlfriend to move in with them.”

“ _Shut it,_ ” Alana says, flushing bright red.

“So what now?” Minkowski asks, looking around at the diverse inhabitants of the room. “What do we do next?”

“Sleep,” Lovelace says, to a resounding chorus of approval. “I don’t mind taking the first watch.”

“You can _all_ sleep,” Hera says. “I’ll watch out for Cutter. I can access… well, pretty much everything! Security cameras, radio frequencies… I’ll keep you all safe.”

“Thanks, baby,” Maxwell yawns, a sweet smile on her face. “I’m just gonna… I’m just gonna rest my eyes for a little while.”

Well-tuned to her by now, Jacobi darts forward to catch her just as she slips off the beanbag.

“Alana!”

“I got her, I got her,” Jacobi tells Hera, fondly. “She’s just exhausted. She’s been coding for… God, I don’t know. What time is it, again?”

“Dominik will be home soon,” Minkowski sighs. “I should get back to reality. I need to have a serious talk with my husband, after… a _long_ nap.”

“Yeah,” Lovelace yawns, struggling to her feet: “I’ll bounce too. We all need to sleep. Regroup in the morning. Stay alive till then,” she says to everyone, and walks back to her air force bunk. Minkowski makes her goodbyes, and follows suit, to a comfortable double bed and a worried husband. Kepler and Jacobi get Alana settled on the sofa, and then leave too.

“Do you mind if I stick around, Hera?” Eiffel asks, through a long yawn. “That coffee sounds like a good idea.”

“Get some sleep, Doug,” Hera says: firm but fond. “I told you, I got this.”

Smiling, Eiffel takes the other sofa, knowing that he will wake up in his prison cell, but appreciating it all the same. As he closes his eyes, Hera dims the lights, and he thinks of Hilbert in the lab. _I should never have awoken this cluster,_ the scientist had said. With his face pressed into the comfortable corduroy of Maxwell’s sofa, in a warm house a few hundred miles from Texas State Penitentiary: Doug can’t say he minds.

 


	2. coda (jacobi)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jacobi's coda: set after he meets Kepler, and before they help Maxwell rescue Hera. Mentions of alcohol abuse and withdrawal.

Jacobi shakes at night, and he doesn’t sleep. He lies on the sofa in the living room to avoid waking Kepler. He snaps at Maxwell, who thinks he’s having nightmares. He does have nightmares, but that’s not the fucking _point._

“Withdrawal is a bitch,” agrees Eiffel solemnly. Jacobi looks at him, and they shift to Doug’s cell. It’s night there too. Jacobi looks around at the now-familiar grey concrete walls, and doesn’t catch Eiffel’s eye.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Jacobi says eventually. “It’s bad enough that I…”

 “It’s not your fault,” Eiffel says.

He sounds calm, and resigned, and it drives Jacobi up the fucking wall. (Everything does, these days.) “Not my _fault?_ ” he asks, spitting the words out like venom, even though it’s not Eiffel he’s angry with. “Why aren’t you angry with me? Why aren’t you fucking _furious_ with me?”

Eiffel shrugs. “You didn’t know. None of us knew how this works.”

“I knew,” Jacobi says. The words taste bitter in his mouth, like harsh vodka, and _God,_ he wants a drink. “I was a fully-functioning, responsible alcoholic,” he says, almost smiling at the joke. “I got by in the day and got shitfaced at night. But when I visited you those first few times, it felt like… like I would have done _anything_ for a drink. Not just business as usual. More urgent. Except I could go get that drink, and you couldn’t. Oh, I knew _exactly_ what I was doing to you,” he says, and lets out a dark laugh. He wonders sometimes what Kepler sees in him, but in moments like this, he understands. “Get out of here.”

Eiffel stares at him with such sadness in his eyes that it makes Jacobi want to punch him to get him to stop with the fucking _pity_ already _._ “Stop it,” he snarls. “Stop it, stop looking at me like that. I don’t need your god damn sympathy. I don’t _want_ it. _Why can’t you just hate me like a normal person -_ ”

There’s a hand on his shoulder. Daniel looks around and sees they’ve shifted back to the apartment. The hand is Kepler’s. It is only at that moment he realises he’d been shouting.

His hands are shaking worse than ever. Warren wraps his arms around Jacobi’s waist to steady him, but he’s too far gone, practically vibrating. He wants to throw up and collapse: preferably in that order, but he’s not picky.

“This _is_ gonna pass,” Eiffel says, after he and Kepler exchange a look. “I _promise_. In a few days, maybe two days, the shakes will stop, and you’ll stop throwing up, and you’ll be able to sleep again. You’ll still want to drink, but…”

“But we’ll be here,” Kepler says, voice rough with sleep and worry. Eiffel slips away, and Jacobi feels guilty, but grateful. He wants to be the only person who ever sees Kepler’s softer side. He steadies himself against the familiar warm bulk pressing against his back and tries to remember how to breathe. “Go lie down,” Kepler says after a moment of silence. He presses a kiss to the back of Jacobi’s neck, tasting the salt sweat on his hot skin. “Try to sleep.”

“I’m sorry,” Jacobi says quietly, and doesn’t move. “Some help I turned out to be, huh? You should have gone and found Minkowski first. Someone _useful._ ”

“I wanted _you,_ ” Kepler says like it’s final, and maybe it is. “Stop talking crap. I’ll get you some water.”

“Chamomile tea would help him sleep,” Minkowski says.

Kepler raises an eyebrow at her sudden appearance in the kitchen doorway. “Do I look like a man who owns chamomile tea? Jacobi, go and get some rest,” he says. “Don’t make me tell you again.”

“Yes sir,” Jacobi mumbles as he leaves, only half joking. He finds the bed still warm from where Kepler was asleep moments before, and tumbles onto it, too tired to move the covers. It’s Lovelace who pokes his face until he groans at her and removes his glasses, and Maxwell who pulls the sheets back so he can crawl inside. None of them are asleep tonight thanks to his withdrawal insomnia, and he feels even guiltier as Lovelace yawns when she leaves.

“You’d better be less of an asshole in two days,” Maxwell says, her voice mingling fondness and irritation in that special way of hers. “We need you.”

“I will _always_ be an asshole,” Jacobi replies, wanting to make her laugh after snapping at her so many times the night before. He takes her hand. “But I promise I’ll be the asshole who helps save our friend.”

He still needs to apologise properly to Eiffel, and make himself useful for Kepler, and do a thousand other things to make himself worthy of this crazy situation they’ve got going on. But when Maxwell smiles at him, and says “I’ll hold you to that,” he feels like maybe he _can_ do something right after all.

He still doesn’t sleep. He drinks the water that’s put down on the bedside table and starts learning the plan off by heart as Warren falls back to sleep beside him. Hera, who never seems to sleep, hums appreciatively in the back of his mind as he flicks through maps and blueprints and security codes and it feels almost like she’s singing him to sleep. When he wakes up in the morning there are papers all over the bed from where they’d slipped out of his hands and he still feels like death, but there’s an arm curled around his waist and for the first time in two years, he has a purpose again.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to everyone who's commented and asked for more! chat to me on tumblr @captainlovelxce


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